Troubles Shared
by Catsy
Summary: Kadyn had never needed to party with anyone but Camilla, his real-life wife and longtime gaming partner. But when a risky dungeon run goes horribly wrong, he's forced to seek help from unexpected sources to set things right. First-person OC viewpoint with appearances by some canon characters.
1. Chapter 1

**January 12, 2024  
Floor 41: Gravesoil Moors  
Underdark Catacombs, Level 43**

"This is far too easy!"

You know how you cringe when you're watching a movie and a character tempts fate with some cliché bit of dialogue? Like, "what could possibly go wrong?" Or "I'm sure glad that's all over with!" This is usually about two seconds before the sky opens up and a bolt of lightning strikes, or a truck comes roaring out of nowhere and splatters the hapless protagonist who was dumb enough to double-dare Murphy's Law to prove them wrong.

Believe it or not, people actually say those things. So when Camilla grinned at me through the rapidly evaporating cloud of polygons that used to be an Underdark Lurkwing and marveled at the easy time we were having cleaning up after the front-line raid groups, I wanted to throw something at her. And if we were in a Safe Area where her HP wouldn't drop rather than forty-plus levels deep in a lethal dungeon, I probably would've. Instead I just rolled my eyes and blew one of my auburn bangs out of my face with a puff of simulated breath before responding.

"Let's not get overconfident, love. We're deeper in the Underdark Catacombs than we've ever been, and we never would've gotten even this far if the front-liners hadn't already cleared a path."

My wife-my real wife from the real world, as well as my partner in-game-gave me a sheepish smile and shrugged. "Give me a break, Kadyn, we'll be fine if we keep moving. We're going to be rich once we vendor all the stuff the clearers left behind, and the repops in this area are slow enough that we can handle the few mobs that spawn."

The hell of it was, she was right. Not for the first time I thanked whatever stars made me lucky enough to fall in love with someone who not only shared my passion for gaming, but was _good_ at it. When we first found ourselves trapped in this Death Game, she was the one who came up with the plan to clean up the leavings of higher-level players until we were strong enough to survive on our own. While I was freaking out about the ramifications of being stuck here, she was the one who kept a cool head-and kept us alive.

_"Look, Seiji," _she'd said, getting my attention with my real name rather than addressing me with the character name I always used. We were so used to gaming together that we usually referred to each other with our online nicknames even in the privacy of our home, and hearing my legal name from her lips focused me, calming the hysteria that threatened to bubble up again. _"Look at me. Look at me! You and I have been clearing games together for what, twelve years now? This is just another MMO. We can _do_ this. Just treat it like hardcore mode, where your character is deleted after one death. No unnecessary risks. We play it safe and grind until we can survive."_

I trusted her strength and good sense. So I set aside the growing unease that itched at the back of my neck, gave her my best smile, and twirled one of my daggers in hand before tapping open a status screen to check its durability.

Flashy displays like that never failed to get her giggling. In battle, Camilla is all business-no wasted movement, no flourishes, just a blur of shield and sword and forest green armor. I'm the kind of geek who indulges in that sort of display-the pose I struck after backstabbing a mob earlier set her to laughing so hard that I thought she was going to aggro every living thing on the floor. This time she just shook her head and gave my shoulder a push to propel me onward. "Come on, Sir Flaunts-a-lot, let's move on before the whole room pops on top of us."

"Hey, you're the knight in this party," I complained to the sound of her derisive raspberry.

And so it went for the next few hours as we scouted our way through the Catacombs, following the trail of unwanted loot and occasionally even the sounds of battle as the raid group ahead of us cut a path through the thick population of high-level mobs. Our strategy was simple, and it had served us well for the last year: follow a high-level group or raid, pick up their leavings, and clean up the small number of mobs that respawn in their wake for XP. We're not too proud to be vultures-I mean, when it comes right down to it, the items left on the ground would just decay and disappear over time anyway; better that someone get some use or money out of them. You'd be amazed at the kind of stuff high-level players will just drop on the floor to save inventory space-their trash is our treasure. It's where I got my favorite dagger, and Camilla her new breastplate; it keeps us well-funded from all the vendor trash we sell.

It's hard to say when we actually strayed off the path. The mob density in a given area isn't always consistent, and we'd gotten a bit complacent whenever we came upon an empty or almost-empty room, assuming it meant that someone had been here ahead of us. But we knew with certainty that we'd taken a wrong turn when I used my Search skill on the next room, and found it to be a dead end full of monsters-far too many for us to handle. No one had been in that room before us recently-we were lost.

"No way," I said quietly but urgently, backing away from the door as soon as I activated my Search skill. "I wouldn't even open it-we don't know what their aggro radius is or what senses they have."

Camilla planted her sword tip-down in a way no real sword should ever be abused, and leaned on it for a few moments, her long flame-red hair falling across her cheeks as she dipped her head towards me. "That's great, K, but what now?"

Several lines creased my forehead as my brow furrowed in thought. "Well, I think it's pretty obvious the raid didn't come through here. That chamber is a dead end, and there's at least ten monsters in there, probably a linked mob. We pull one, we pull them all. And when was the last time you saw the glitter of loot left on the ground?"

"Too long," she admitted.

"Too long," I agreed. "So we're off the path. And I think I have an idea where we took a wrong turn. Remember that huge puzzle room with the three levers and the pit and dart traps?"

"Would that be the dart trap that you didn't find, and that I had to dodge like hell?" Her voice was sugar and affection honed to a razor-sharp edge.

It was my turn to grin sheepishly. "Have I mentioned that you're beautiful when you dance?"

"I'll show you dan-"

"Pop!" I shouted suddenly, as a fountain of blue light behind Camilla signaled a respawning mob. Glowing red eyes shone out from a snarling mess of matted fur, and a staccato rumble like the ire of an asthmatic lion echoed off the walls.

Whirling, Camilla instinctively brought up her glimmering green kite shield with a practiced sweep of the arm, knocking away the dripping claws of the Underdark Growler that had just appeared. "Switch!" she called out, signaling me to exploit the opening she'd created.

Dagger unsheathed, my right arm was already glowing with the beginning of an Art, one of the quickest I could bring out: Leaping Stab. I felt the familiar _rightness_ of the motion input done correctly, felt the system assist take over and my body automatically go through the movements of a technique that at this point I could almost do on my own without the assist. The blow sank into the flank of the Growler, a bright flash indicating a critical hit that chipped away about a quarter of its HP bar. Aside from being fast to execute, Leaping Stab had a very quick recovery time and I was already jumping back as the Growler's claws whistled through the space I'd just occupied.

The downside of a crit like that is that it draws aggro like nobody's business. Intellectually I knew these mobs were just code on a server somewhere, but I could swear that I _really_ pissed off this Growler. As it crouched, preparing to leap at me, Camilla's longsword bit deeply into its back and diverted its attention. We quickly fell into roles that were familiar to us long before we'd ever heard of SAO: she as the "tank", the armored anchor of our duo who focused on "turning" the mob and keeping its attention so that we could surround it on opposite sides; me as the "DPS" character focused on dealing burst damage and exploiting weaknesses and openings. Despite the surprise attack from the unexpected respawn, we made quick work of the Growler, and grinned at each other through the translucent UI windows announcing our spoils.

"Thanks," she said, with no need to explain.

I shook my head, and offered her the crook of an elbow. "Would the lady care for an escort to the nearest Safe Zone?"

"The lady would like to remind the gentleman that _she_ is _his_ escort."

Miming a mortal wound, I gestured towards the door through which we entered. "Let's go. We know someone cleared this room and not the next, but I have no idea how many of those things are placed here. If we backtrack quickly we can get back on the path and scavenge some more stuff before the bulk of the mobs respawn."

It was a great plan. But what was it some famous general said? That no plan survives first contact with the enemy? Something like that.

In this case, the enemy was our own greed.

We retraced our steps with a sense of growing urgency, working our way back to the puzzle room Camilla had teased me about. Pinching the air before me and tracing an invisible line as we walked, I brought up a map and status menu, tracing a path to our destination and glancing at the time. If we could finish up in the next hour or so, we'd make it back in time for the NPC feast event scheduled for tonight-and neither of us were going to pass up free food!

"Almost there," I said, collapsing the menus and glancing at my wife.

We weren't the only ones.

It was sheer luck that I chose to activate my Search skill when I did. I blinked as I noticed the red shapes dimly visible through the walls ahead, and reached out to grab the collar of Camilla's armor, causing her to stagger to a stop.

"The hell, K-"

"Shh!" I hissed sharply.

What was indistinct before was becoming clearer as I focused. The puzzle room was no longer empty-far from it. Beyond the walls I could see the amorphous red shapes of at least half a dozen monsters of a type I couldn't identify. At that point it dawned on me that this puzzle room, large as it was, must've been the lair of some kind of sub-boss on this level. The raid group had cleared it, and it hadn't respawned, but its adds-that is, the lesser creatures accompanying it-had.

"Repops. Six, maybe eight creatures," I explained quietly. "They're big, humanoid in shape, but I can't tell what they are from this side of the door. Two by the levers in the center of the room, two by the original entryway, and at least two roamers pathing around the perimeter of the room." I squinted, as if that was going to help me pierce the veil of distance and stone. For all I knew, maybe it would.

"Can we take them?" That was of course the most important question. Her voice was quiet, nearly a whisper, and I responded in kind as I slumped heavily against the wall.

"Don't think so, but if we're careful we can get around them. Not much choice, really."

"What about our crystals?"

I shook my head. "Not unless we have to. They're the only ones we have, and replacing them would wipe out at least half our take from this run. The info we bought from Argo said there was a portal back to the top level at the bottom of this dungeon, and if we catch up with the raid group we can use it."

Chewing at her upper lip thoughtfully, Camilla finally nodded. "All right. How do you want to play this?"

I waved a hand and pulled up the area map, tagging several points on the map with a fingertip as we sat shoulder to shoulder on the cold floor. "When the next roamer passes by, I'm going to open the door. Hug the wall to your left and move quickly and quietly to the north doorway _here_. It's about twenty meters in, and it's separated from the rest of the room by this pit. The only source of light I recall was from the torches by the levers in the center of the room-the edges of the room should be dark enough for us to make it without drawing drawing aggro."

I watched Camilla's face as she stared at the map, eyes flicking around it. We'd played together long enough for me to know that she was committing the layout of the room to memory, and that once she did she wouldn't need the map. "All right. You take the lead on this one; I'll follow right behind you. If anything goes wrong..."

"If one of the roamers so much as _looks_ at us funny," I said firmly, "use your teleport crystal. We can't take that whole room."

Our eyes met as I dismissed the map window, agreement passing unspoken between us as our fingers laced together. Suddenly, Camilla reached up and seized my face in her hands, pulling me in for the kind of kiss that promised one hell of a reward later for getting through this. As we broke apart, foreheads touching, she spoke quietly. "I love you, Kadyn. Ready when you are."

As the red glow of the roaming mob on the other side of the wall moved past our position, I eased the door open with my fingertips and waited for my eyes to adjust, watching the cursors of the nearest mobs to see if they turned red to indicate they'd gone hostile on us and evaluating what we faced.

The roamer that had just passed us was just as deep in shadow as we would be at the edge of the room, but the two in the center of the room were clearly illuminated. My breath caught as I focused on them: a pair of large, bestial humanoid shapes, easily a good nine feet tall and covered with the same kind of nasty matted fur we saw on the Growlers. Gnarled taurean horns jutted from either side of their heads, an occasional rheumatic snort echoing through the room as they went through their idle animations. I eyed the poleaxes carried by each monster. They were pitted with rust and corrosion, but I had no doubts about their lethality.

Underdark Gorehoof Ravagers. Camilla jokingly calls Gorehooves zombie minotaurs, but there was nothing funny about them. We'd fought them before, one at a time-and it was a close thing even at that. Now that we were in the room, I could tell that there were seven of them in total: the ones I'd been sure about before, and one more roamer that had been on the far side of the room.

I swallowed hard and kept moving, Camilla following on my heels. I winced every time her armor made noise, convinced that the tiniest metallic squeaks or scrapes were as loud as a shout... but nothing aggroed us.

Then everything went to hell in a flash of blue.

Both of us recognized the respawn effect as it flared up from the floor, and froze in place. It was massive, twice the size of the Ravagers and located right in the center of the room between the two stationary mobs. An ice-cold bolt of fear stabbed through me as I realized what was happening. "Move!" I hissed as quietly as I could, watching in horror as the blue light resolved into a Gorehoof sub-boss I'd never seen before: Vilehorn the Vigilant.

"Named," Camilla whispered as she hurried, hunched over. Most mobs in the game, such as the Growlers and Lurkwings, were of a generic type. If you fought one, you knew what to expect from any others of that specific type in that area. They typically had a set aggro radius beyond which they wouldn't notice you, and a standard loot table and set of attacks.

Named mobs were something else entirely. If a mob had a name-especially if it started with the definite article "The"-you could expect it to be significantly more powerful than its base type, with unique drops and a commensurately higher reward to balance the risk.

They were also typically much more alert than their generic brethren. Vilehorn the Vigilant turned as it finished spawning, burning eyes searching for the presence it detected. As it fixed its gaze on our position, it raised its poleaxe and drove the blunt end into the floor, the stone ringing like a bell and causing every other Gorehoof in the room to stop and turn towards us as well. Eight targeting cursors turned crimson at once.

The gig was up. "Crystals!" Camilla barked out, no longer concerned with drawing attention that was already ours. Before the word had finished echoing off the walls, both of us were opening our system menus and frantically navigating to our shared inventory. A blue teleport crystal appeared in each of our hands as Vilehorn and his adds rushed towards us, the dank stone of the Catacombs thundering beneath their hooves.

"Teleport! Gilthac!"

We shouted the first word in unison. But before Camilla could finish saying the name of our hometown, the roamer that had been closest to us slammed into her like a freight train and sent the teleport crystal flying out of her hands. I could only claw at the air helplessly as a pillar of azure light surrounded me, my sight fading to a deep blue before the discontinuity of teleportation hit.

The last thing I heard was a shattering noise. It sounded like the end of the world.

* * *

Footnotes and glossary of terms:

Because this series is set in a VRMMORPG, there are many terms that may be unfamiliar to readers who have never played a multiplayer online roleplaying game. I have done my best to explain them contextually where they first appear, but in order to avoid cumbersome exposition I'll be defining any such terms here when I think there is some possibility of confusion.

**Adds**: additional enemies. Usually refers to escorts for a more powerful "boss" type monster. Also used to refer to any nearby enemies which unexpectedly "add" themselves to a fight already in progress.

**Aggro**: used as a noun, it refers to the level of "hate" that a computer-controlled enemy has towards a particular player, affecting who that enemy targets or prioritizes. Used as a verb, it can refer either to the act of triggering combat with a previously unengaged enemy, or to the enemy's act of becoming hostile.

**Boss**: an unusually powerful enemy that cannot typically be defeated by a single character or even a single party.

**Crit**: short for critical hit, an exceptionally powerful hit that does more damage than usual. Crits are usually a matter of chance, although some weapons and skills have a higher crit chance than others.

**Loot**: items dropped by defeated enemies.

**Mob**: an enemy or potential enemy that is computer-controlled. Can sometimes refer to two or more individuals who act together as a unit, which are usually called an **encounter** or a **linked mob**.

**Named**: a unique mob with a name of its own—e.g. "Illfang the Kobold Lord" rather than "a Kobold". Named are usually more difficult than generic mobs and give better rewards.

**Pop/Spawn**: refers to a new mob which is suddenly generated by the game in a specific location.

**Raid**: an assault group made up of a large number of players divided into two or more parties for the purpose of taking on enemies, like bosses, which are too powerful for them to take on individually.

**Repop/Respawn**: refers to the spawning of a mob which previously existed in a given location but which was killed or removed. Most generic mobs have a respawn cycle that will regenerate them after a set period of time passes.

**Roamer**: a mob which is not fixed in a specific spot, but which roams around an area—usually within a set radius or along a set path.

**Vendor**: used as a noun, refers to an NPC that buys, sells or trades items with players. Used as a verb, refers to the act of selling off unwanted items (**vendor trash**) to a vendor to make money.


	2. Chapter 2

I once had surgery on my knee. It was invasive enough that they had to put me out, so I didn't retain any memory of the surgery itself. What has always stayed with me is a sense of _discontinuity_. One moment I was lying there in the operating room with a mask over my face, breathing some kind of anesthetic gas while a nurse asked me what I did for a living and what my family was like, distracting me while the gas took effect. The next moment I was waking up in the recovery room. And in between these two moments was a kind of tangible nothingness where I simply _wasn't_. No dreams. No drowsiness. It wasn't like flipping a light switch, or like a jump cut scene in a movie-it was a period of oblivion. It was death without the obituary.

That's what teleportation in Aincrad felt like to me.

There was a roaring in my ears as black faded to the deep blue of night, giving way to a column of bright blue light that lasted a few moments before dissolving. And again there was that brief moment of disorientation as my mind adjusted to the interruption in my consciousness and tried to pick up where it left off.

The roaring in my ears gave way to the sounds of a crowd, overlaid with a coarse noise that reverberated across the town square. The noise was deafening, all-consuming, and it took a few seconds before I realized that it was me: I was on my knees and screaming a banshee wail of anguish, all eyes in the town square turning towards me.

My fingers scraped at the ground as if I could tunnel my way back into the dungeon where I left Camilla. Where I left the only person in this cursed virtual world that mattered to me. Where I left her to d-

_Don't even think it_, came the unbidden thought.

Over and over again I beat at the ground with my dagger, each impact producing a flash of purple light and the system message _Immortal Object_. The message taunted me, as if mocking the futility of my efforts. At last the dagger, its durability exhausted, shattered against the cobblestone street. The sound of tinkling glass was not unlike the last sound I heard in that awful place, the sound that filled my ears right after that Gorehoof slammed into my wife and-

_No!_

As the last of the broken dagger's shimmering green polygons floated up through my fingers, I crumpled to the ground on my side. My hoarse screams trailed off into the keening of a mortally wounded animal, sobs wracking my body. I barely felt the hands touching me, barely heard the voices surrounding me. The cobblestones were cold, but the darkness that swept me up and embraced me was very warm, and I embraced it in return.

* * *

"Honestly, Seiji, how can you not be excited?"

As I opened my eyes, I saw my wife standing in the line for picking up our SAO pre-order, wearing a bright green sun dress and an exasperated expression. Neon and digital lights from hundreds of billboards painted her pale skin with rainbow colors, and a sense of disorientation and wrongness gnawed at me. I remembered the moment as if it was yesterday-I had just said something ambivalent-sounding in response to some gushing statement she'd made about Sword Art Online, and it had been the wrong thing to say.

"I _am_ excited," I protested. "It's just… different, is all. Color me paranoid, but playing together on the Internet is one thing-I'm not sure how I feel about a device that messes with our brains. Think about it, Rebecca: it's full-sensory, right? It intercepts the things we tell our bodies to do, and sends back signals that fool us into feeling things that aren't there. That doesn't scare you just a little?"

"Hey, if you don't want it, I'll buy your copy," said a teenager in line behind us.

"Bite me," my wife and I both said in unison, before turning to look at each other and laughing. The boy looked like he wanted to make something of it, but wasn't quite sure how to react to the redheaded American woman at my side who'd just told him off in fluent Japanese.

"Don't get me wrong," she continued to me as if the teen hadn't spoken. "It _is_ a little scary. Change usually is, especially to Japanese. But this is the next step in gaming that we've been waiting for since… since… well, ever! Argus has invested millions in the development of the NerveGear. It's Kayaba's life's work. People have been using it for months now, even if the first apps for it were lame. A thousand people played the SAO closed beta. You think it would've gotten this far if it wasn't safe?"

When she put it that way, there wasn't really much I could say to argue the point. But I still couldn't shake a horrible sense of foreboding and wrongness that wasn't present when we originally had that conversation. I felt dizzy, and put a hand on Rebecca's shoulder to steady myself.

"Kadyn?" I heard her say, using my nickname. "You all right?"

"No," I said in a voice that was both my own and very much not. Even though there were blue skies on launch day, I could feel everything getting darker, as if storm clouds were passing overhead and leaving everything in shadow. The lights from the billboards were bright, too bright, and some of them began to flicker as the images on them dissolved slowly into multicolored triangles.

The teenager we'd spoken with before gestured at me. "So what's wrong with him?" The question echoed as my vision blurred and various people standing in line started shattering into polygons with a sound like a cabinet full of glass being overturned.

"There's nothing physically wrong with him," Rebecca said before she, too, shattered like the rest.

* * *

"Well, then what happened to him?" I heard another female voice say.

I wasn't ready to open my eyes again. Camilla-my wife, Rebecca-was dead, her brain fried by the NerveGear when her HP reached zero. I remembered as soon as awareness returned to me, and in a flash of denial I thought that maybe if I went back to sleep, I could see her again like I did just now... even if only for a few moments. It was all I could do not to cry out again.

"Hrm." the other voice, the one that I'd thought was Camilla's when I was coming to, sounded puzzled. "Well, judging by the way he was behaving, if I had to guess I'd say his party wiped. He was shrieking like someone had just shot his cat. Friends of his, probably."

"My wife," I croaked, forcing myself to open my eyes and face reality.

"Oh, shit," one of the female players said softly. It was the voice that had been asking what happened to me, and it belonged to a girl that was somewhere in her mid to late teens. As I fought to focus on her, a colored blur resolved into long chestnut-colored hair with a single braid on either side drawn back into a kind of ring encircling her head. Her skin was pale like Camilla's, but her features were unmistakably Japanese, and she wore the red-and-white livery of a powerful guild called Knights of the Blood Oath. We'd followed in their wake before, Camilla and I.

_Camilla…_

As I sat up, I tried to clear my head and take stock of my surroundings. I was lying-now, sitting-on a bed in one of Gilthac's inns. I recognized it immediately; we'd stayed there before. Two other players faced me, standing next to each other on the side of the bed to my right.

Next to the girl from the raiding guild, I saw who I presumed was the owner of the first voice: a short woman with green hair in a bowl cut, wearing a tattered-looking apron and holding a healing potion. She looked to be somewhere in her 20s, and although I didn't know her name I'd seen her around Gilthac before. She was a pure crafter, always hawking her wares in the square; I'd never seen her carrying weapons. She had one hand covering her mouth, a look of shock on her face.

"I'm sorry for your loss," said the long-haired girl from the raiding guild finally. "Can you tell us what happened?"

_Do I have to?_ I thought, reluctant to poke at a wound that was still raw and bleeding. But whoever these people were, they'd been kind to me. It could've just as easily been a PKer who'd picked me up after I passed out, although at the moment I couldn't think of how that would've been much worse than what had already happened. And they'd paid for an inn room to put me in. I owed them an explanation, if not more.

So I began with the easy stuff. I explained how Camilla and I met while I was an overseas transfer student, gave them the short version of how we discovered a mutual love of gaming that blossomed into romance and eventually a life together. Despite the generally unspoken rule about never discussing the real-world lives we left behind when we were trapped in SAO, the two girls listened without interrupting.

Relating these memories of happier times helped me work myself up to today's horrible events. When I got to the part where the named respawned, I could tell from their anguished expressions that both of them knew what was coming, and probably could've filled in the rest themselves. Both of the other players were already near tears as I described the sound of Camilla's avatar shattering while I teleported to safety, and I trailed off weakly as the brown-haired girl squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip.

"It was my fault," I said, my voice a rough whisper. "I suggested we press on instead of doing the safe thing and porting back. I came up with the plan to sneak past those mobs and told her to follow me. I-"

"Stop it." The words cut me off before I could finish. I looked up at the young girl in red and white. She wasn't quite glaring at me, but the intensity of the look on her face stopped me in my tracks long enough for her to continue.

"It was _not _your fault. You couldn't have known that boss was going to respawn there. You couldn't have known that the nearest mob would target her, or that it would interrupt her before she could teleport. If you want to blame anyone, blame the man who trapped us all in this Death Game. You did everything you could to protect her-and she would've wanted you to survive even if she didn't."

"You weren't there." The sharp retort was small thanks for what these two players had done for me so far.

The brown-haired girl wasn't fazed. "Well, was there anything you left out?"

I took a moment to think it over. I'd glossed over most of the details of the life I had with Camilla, not wanting to burden them with stories of the real world. But as the story went on, it had grown in detail. I couldn't think of anything I'd omitted, and shook my head.

There didn't seem to be much either player could say in response. Silence fell on the room as we all chewed on that.

After a few minutes, the green-haired girl spoke up. "Did she leave you anything?"

At first I didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"Any kind of message or inheritance. An item that was precious to both of you. A recording to be delivered on the occasion of her death. Anything to remember her by. If nothing else, her equipment should be in your shared inventory." She gestured towards my left hand. Strictly speaking, the system didn't require married couples in the game to wear rings, but we'd had a pair crafted anyway. It meant something to us.

For the first time since the tragedy, light returned to my face, my eyes widening. Kicking myself for not thinking of it before, I pinched the air in front of me and waved my hand to open the system menu. But when I opened my inventory, my hopes sank. "No, it's not." I flicked my finger and scrolled quickly through the list. "Just the pile of vendor trash that she died for," I added bitterly.

Feeling angrier with myself than ever, I slashed at the air to close the menus, botching the gesture in my haste. The inventory closed and the lines of the system menu spun like a roulette wheel, coming to rest randomly.

I froze in place, staring at the menu.

The sadness on the faces of the two other players gave way to confusion as they took in my expression. Our avatars have no blood vessels, but the emotion simulation system does a pretty good job-my face must have been as white as the sheets on which I sat, my whole body beginning to shake as if chilled to the bone.

"What?" the brown-haired girl finally asked.

Not trusting myself to speak quite yet, I reached out with one trembling finger and carefully tapped the visibility icon, allowing my UI windows to be seen by other players. I swept the palm of my hand in front of me, rotating the windows to one side so that the others could see over my shoulder.

As both girls leaned in to look at the UI, I pointed at my very short friends list where I could clearly see Camilla's name. Right now, it should be gray, indicating a player that didn't exist anymore.

It wasn't.

I don't know how long the three of us were locked in that moment of shocked silence. A second, a few, maybe even a minute. I almost didn't get the words out. "Does that mean what I think it does?"

A warm hand came to rest on my shoulder. I looked up at the owner of the hand, and saw the brown-haired girl starting to smile through the tears that streaked her face. She nodded quickly before replying.

"It means she's still alive."

* * *

Glossary of terms:

**PK**: player-kill. Refers to the deliberate killing of one character by another. In SAO, considering the consequences of character death, this is tantamount to murder.

**Raiding guild**: a guild dedicated to or focusing on fielding an effective raid group, typically for the purposes of defeating high-end content.

**UI**: user interface. The windows, buttons and other visual parts of a computer program with which the user interacts and from which they get information.


	3. Chapter 3

_Still alive._

Camilla was still alive. As impossible as it seemed, my wife was-somehow-still alive.

No matter how much I wanted to believe it, there was a part of me that protested that this was just another cruel joke on the part of the game's creator, giving me false hope only to set me up for a more devastating fall. "But how…?"

After saying this, I turned to look at the two other players in the inn room with me, both of whom seemed a lot more inclined to accept this unbelievable twist of fate than I was. The brown-haired girl in the livery of the Knights of the Blood Oath-my thoughts halted there, as I realized I didn't even know the names of my two benefactors. "I'm sorry, I've been so rude. My name is Kadyn."

"Rigel," said the green-haired woman who seemed around my age, setting aside the potion she was holding and bowing politely. "I craft supplies for those who have the courage to actually go out and fight." The clear implication was that this was courage she lacked.

I returned her bow from my sitting position on the edge of the bed. "I think I've bought some of your potions, but we've never spoken directly."

The younger brown-haired girl also bowed. "Asuna, of the clearing guild Knights of the Blood Oath."

_The_ Asuna? Asuna the Flash? I'd never seen her before, but I knew her by reputation. I was plainly shocked that a player of her caliber would bother with someone like me. I guessed that she must've been here visiting Rigel; they seemed to know each other.

Sweeping these thoughts aside, I gave the girl a wan smile. "I'm pretty sure my wife and I have cleaned up your guild's leftovers before."

"So that's your usual tactic? Following larger, higher-level groups and picking up the stuff they don't want?"

There was no malice in her reply. Perhaps just a hint of teasing. It still put my back up. "That's right," I said a little defensively. "It's all going to decay and disappear anyway, and it's safer than trying to clear a dungeon ourselves." No sooner than the words left my mouth did I realize the horrible irony in them, and I looked away, ashamed.

"Relax," Asuna said in a reassuring tone. "I think most of us have done that before, especially when our levels were low for the area we were in."

"I don't understand, though," Rigel said, twisting a lock of her hair between thumb and forefinger. "You said she was dead. You said you heard her avatar shatter as you were porting out."

"I did, and I did." That memory was still quite fresh, and it hurt despite the renewed hope that I might see her again.

Asuna's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Wait. You said you _heard_ her shatter. Did you _see_ it happen?"

"No." That one word allowed that seed of hope to blossom just a little further.

She tapped a finger against her chin, thinking. "What did you see? I mean, exactly."

As little as I wanted to think about those last few moments, I concentrated on summoning the details. "The boss and his adds aggroed us. Camilla and I both brought out our teleport crystals. We both started to activate them. There was a Gorehoof roamer nearby, the one that had passed the door right before we entered the room. It was closer than any of the others, and it… it…"

Rigel reached out and squeezed my shoulder wordlessly. I swallowed, gathering myself, and continued.

"It did some kind of rushing attack and rammed into her, knocking the crystal out of her hand and interrupting her before she could finish stating her destination. The last thing I saw was the Gorehoof's momentum carrying her out of my field of view. And then, right before I ported, I heard her avatar shatter… at least… I thought…"

Asuna's thoughtful look gave way to realization, and she snapped her fingers. "No, you didn't."

Rigel looked as confused as I felt. "Then what…?"

If you could bottle Asuna's expression at that moment, you could sell it as a Potion of Smug Satisfaction. "The crystal."

"The crys-oh, my god, _I am such a fucking idiot._" I smacked the heel of my palm into my forehead twice and shook my head. "Excuse me."

Looking back and forth between the two of us, Rigel put her hands on her hips and pouted. "Apparently so am I. What's the punch line?"

Asuna held up one hand, fingers slightly apart as if grasping a teleport crystal. "His wife had already activated the teleport crystal. Then the mob attacked her, and knocked it out of her hand, interrupting her." She flicked her fingers and held her empty hand palm-up. "What happens to a crystal after you use it?"

"It shatters," both Rigel and I said at the same time.

"Right. The system didn't care that she didn't finish saying where she wanted to go. It's probably programmed to fizzle a crystal as soon as it's used, whether or not the attempt was successful. That's what you heard."

As she spoke, I opened my menu and quickly drilled down to the game's private messaging system. Selecting _new message_, I tapped on Camilla's name in the contact list but was immediately presented with a message in purple text hanging in the air before me: _Invalid recipient - blocked by environment_. "What does this mean?" I asked.

Peering at my window, which was still set to be visible to others, Asuna replied, "Oh-that's because you can't send a message to players who are in a dungeon of any kind. It means she's probably still down there somewhere. That would make sense."

_Oh, god,_ I thought. Immediately I swiped the messaging window closed and tried to display her status. Because we were married in-game, we should be able to see each other's status windows at any time. But when I pulled it up, the screen was blank and showed nothing but the same hateful message: _blocked by environment_. I could tell that she was still alive because her name wasn't grayed out-but not what kind of condition she was in.

Next I opened the floor map. All it showed me for her position was a stationary icon at the entrance to the Underdark Catacombs, and I knew all that meant was that she was somewhere inside. I wouldn't be able to access the dungeon map until I was-

"Damnit!" I yelled, punching the virtual window-an act of futility which accomplished precisely nothing except to produce another mocking system error message. As Rigel and Asuna took a few steps back from the edge of the bed, I stood abruptly, navigating to my inventory with a renewed sense of purpose and equipping my backup dagger. "I have to go get her."

"Don't be absurd," Rigel protested. "If the two of you together could barely keep up with the repops after a raid cleared the way ahead, what makes you think you have a chance in hell of getting to her alive by yourself?"

"I hate to say it," Asuna began, "but she's right. You'd never survive the trip alone. All the mobs will have long since respawned."

The look I gave her in return was deathly cold. I knew I was talking to someone who must be ten years younger than me, someone whose life had barely begun when she was trapped here. She couldn't possibly understand. I forced down the rush of cold anger I felt. "Have you ever loved anyone? Loved them more than life itself?"

The girl's pale cheeks colored slightly under the weight of my gaze and words. She hesitated only a moment before nodding in silence.

I've been a teenager in love; I was skeptical that she really knew what it meant. But then I thought about it: is anyone in this game of life and death truly a child anymore? She might have been a teenager, or she might have just looked younger than she was. But either way, I was talking to a ranking member of the most famous and powerful clearing guild in Aincrad. Whatever else she was, she fought for her life and the lives of others every day on the front lines. She was made of stronger stuff than I ever could be.

I softened my tone as I replied. "And would the certainty of your own death stop you if they were the one at the bottom of the Catacombs?"

Asuna looked away, abashed. "No," she said in a small voice.

There we stood for the span of a few heartbeats. Finally, I nodded.

"Then you know what I have to do."

Without waiting for a response, I turned and walked towards the door. The sounds of boisterous conversation wafted up from downstairs as I opened it, along with the familiar smell of the inn's famous bread pudding.

"Wait!"

I halted at the threshold and half-turned, looking over my shoulder. Asuna had rushed over and was holding out her cupped hands, which were filled with several glittering red crystals. I faced her squarely and raised my eyebrows as if to ask, _are you sure?_

She nodded once. "I can always get more. I can't go with you, but it's the least I can do."

My hands closed on the healing items, and I stashed them quickly in my inventory as if afraid she would change her mind. "Thank you," I whispered. It was then that I noticed Rigel, standing beside her friend and also holding out a handful of restorative items, some for healing and some for status effects. I took them with a heavy lump forming in my throat. "Thank you both. I can't ever…"

"You don't have to." Asuna smiled one last time. "Just come back. Both of you."

* * *

The NPC shopkeeper bowed deeply at the waist. "Thank you very much for your business, sir. Please come again."

_Sometimes I really miss old-school RPGs_, I thought as I dismissed the window showing me how much col I'd earned from vendoring off all the crap Camilla and I had picked up. _Where if you got sick of an NPC's rote lines after the hundredth time hearing them, you could just press X a bunch of times to shut them up._

In fairness, the NPCs in this game were nowhere near as annoying as in some classic RPGs. Some of them acted so lifelike, it was hard not to treat them as if they were other players. And at least you weren't hearing the same five voice actors over and over again in completely different towns. I wondered idly if the game's creator had actually hired thousands and thousands of different voice talents, or if the game's speech synthesis routines were just that good. I'd never heard the same voice twice.

I walked out of the shop, shifting my thoughts towards what supplies I was going to need and where to get them. As the door shut behind me, I saw a familiar short figure perched on the low stone wall outside, her hood limned in moonlight. I waved in a friendly manner but kept walking, intent on getting on with what had to be done.

"Heya, Kadyn. Heard you're going on a trip."

I sighed and came to a stop, folding my arms. "Hi, Argo. Mind telling me how you know that?"

"Not at all," she replied cheerfully, the whiskers drawn on her cheeks twitching as she smiled. "Got 300 col?"

"Never mind. Sorry, but I'm kind of busy right now."

I turned and made to leave, and only got a few steps before the broker's voice stopped me in my tracks again. "Heard you're looking for a new dagger, too."

That got my attention. I'd broken my best weapon in the fit of helpless rage that consumed me after I thought Camilla had died. I took a deep breath-more for theatrics than out of any need for virtual oxygen-and turned back to Argo again.

"Keep talking."

"So happens I know someone who's looking to unload a really nice one from the 46th floor."

I managed to avoid whistling. I'd been there, of course, shortly after the floor was opened-but it was far above my level. Camilla and I wouldn't have even thought about setting foot in any dungeon that might drop loot like that, cleared path or no. "Could I even equip it?"

"Got me," Argo replied with an enigmatic smile. "But the way you fight, I'm betting you're a pure Agility build. The Agi requirements on the dagger are steep, but the level requirement is only 30."

I was stunned. Assuming I met the other requirements, I could do that. But now to let the other shoe drop. "How much?"

In so asking, I realized I'd just given Argo a free piece of information: she knew that I was at least level 30. Randomly I wondered if she'd ever sell that info to anyone, and what she'd get for it, but pushed that thought aside as I waited for her answer.

"Six thou."

I almost choked. "You're shitting me."

Argo the Rat shrugged and looked bored.

"For that much I could pay a top-level smith to craft one and upgrade it half a dozen times."

"So do it. I'm just here to pass along the offer."

I chewed on that for a good couple of seconds before cautiously asking, "What's so special about this dagger that makes it worth six thousand col?"

As soon as I said that, Argo gave me a smug look. She knew she had me. "Oh, nothing much," she said casually, swinging her legs playfully as they dangled over the side of the wall. "Except that I'm told that it allows you to block and parry with it."

I sucked in a sharp breath before I realized what I was doing. Aside from their lack of reach, the biggest disadvantage of daggers was that they were a purely offensive weapon-you couldn't block or parry with them, only attack. Dagger users relied on other, more defensive characters to create openings for them, and used their extreme agility to retreat out of reach after attacking.

For that reason alone, no solo player with any sense used them, and few party-based characters focused on them to the exclusion of all other weapons. I did so because Camilla had always been my sword and shield-I didn't need anyone or anything else. Until now.

A dagger with a special effect that allowed you to defend… I'd never heard of such a thing.

I had to have it. "Tell me who they are."

"That'll cost extra."

"Never mind then. How do we do this?"

In one fluid movement, Argo slipped off the wall and dropped to the ground. She held out her hand, palm up.

I'd hoped to haggle the seller down a bit, but I didn't have time for a game of telephone with Argo's mystery seller. Sighing, I tapped my coin pouch and split out 6000 col from the pop-up menu. The selected amount materialized in the palm of my other hand as a new bag. She gave me a satisfied look as she took my money. "Sankyuu. I'll meet you at the entrance to the Underdark Catacombs in one hour with your shiny new dagger."

Eyeing her suspiciously, I asked, "And how would you know where I was planning to be?"

Argo replied brightly, "I'll tell you for 500-"

"_Never mind._"


	4. Chapter 4

According to the lore given out by the town NPCs, the Soul Harvest festival supposedly spanned the first two weeks of every year in the town of Gilthac. I wouldn't know-this time last year, we were barely level 15 and didn't dare venture above the 20th floor. Even now we'd only been living here for about a month.

They said that the festival originated after a devastating plague that turned a once-vibrant area full of life into what is now called the Gravesoil Moors. Anguished by seeing their loved ones return as undead creatures rather than going on to their final rest, the people of Gilthac decided to throw a magnificent feast at the beginning of each new year. The dead would be honored and their spirits invited to dine amongst the living. Each family would set a place at their table for every person lost during the previous year, and visitors to the town were encouraged to share in the bounty at tables set in the public square.

All fiction, of course. Aincrad had no true history; it was all the product of Kayaba Akihiko's rich but demented imagination. But it made a good backstory for the quests here, and the upshot for players wasn't just the free food: for the duration of the festival, all undead field mobs in the open became non-aggro unless attacked.

The town gates opened before me, granting me passage into the night. The sounds of celebration began to recede in the distance, to be replaced by the droning of evening insects and the occasional hoot of an unseen owl. Each step seemed to shed more of the incongruous cheer permeating the town, wrapping me in a cloak of welcome darkness and growing quiet that helped focus my thoughts on the path before me.

If not for the festival, I would've been very worried about setting foot out here alone at night. Camilla and I could take on individual mobs together if we were careful, but this floor was much too high a level for either of us to confront individually and hope to survive for long. The whole reason we came here, after all, was to trail higher-level players and pick up what they left behind.

But we were still in the last few days of the Soul Harvest festival, and although I could detect skeletal mobs milling about within the treeline, none of them seemed to notice me or converge on my location. Which was just as well-I had a few backup daggers, but I wouldn't want to try taking on a real fight with any of them.

The entrance to the Underdark Catacombs lay beneath a series of mass graves allegedly dating back to the days of the plague, accessible through a crumbling crypt jutting out of a low hill in the midst of one of the gravesites.

I hesitated at the periphery, hands balling into fists as I peered through the thick mist and saw dozens of spectral mobs floating aimlessly throughout the gravesites that ought to be empty of monsters. It was a sight I'd never seen before-the only times I'd been here up until now, we'd been following a party that had already cleared the field.

I didn't realize how tense my entire body was until I focused on the nearest specter and saw that its targeting cursor was the green of a non-aggro mob. I staggered for a moment under the sudden release of tension, and I forced myself to relax and press onward. Ghostly faces turned to regard me as I walked along a barely-discernible path that differed from the rest of the terrain only in that it still bore traces of footprints from other players and was bare of even the sickly grass and glowing moss that infested the area in irregular clumps.

"What… is this…"

The voice was hollow and dry, like old leather rasping across a floor, and it was right behind me. I nearly jumped out of my boots as I whirled and saw yet another spectral mob rise out of the ground, and realized that this must be the source of the voice. If this was scripted behavior, it had to be scripted with the intent of making someone soil their armor.

A single nervous glance at the mob's targeting cursor told me that it, too, was non-aggro. Intent on keeping it that way, I made no move to unsheathe a weapon and started backing slowly towards my destination. I was close enough to see the level indicators by the mobs' HP bars now, and what I saw there did not fill me with the tranquility I needed now.

"You… don't belong…" It was a different voice from a different mob, this one to my right.

"No shit," I muttered, willing myself to stop trembling. _The shaking is the system's interpretation of your mental state,_ I told myself. _Your mind is doing it, not your body. You can control it. _As I watched with barely restrained panic, close to a dozen specters from every direction were converging on me, drawn by some unknown signal.

"Go back… to Gilthac…"

"Two more… days…"

"They have their harvest… and then…"

"We… will have ours…"

I felt dizzy as I whipped my head around, trying to keep track of all the mobs around me and trying desperately to stave off a state of gibbering, incoherent terror. I kept slowly moving towards the Catacombs entrance. If even one went hostile, my chances of survival were slim. If they all did… it didn't bear thinking about.

"They won't hurt you, you know."

_That_ wasn't the voice of a ghost. I raised my gaze and saw a cloaked figure standing atop the crypt, silhouetted against the moonlight. Letting out a breath that I didn't really need to hold, I edged past the last of the specters, feeling a wave of cold wash over my arm as it nearly touched one of them. Argo lithely dismounted the crypt roof, landing a few feet in front of me and cocking her head, the hood leaving the top of her face in shadow.

"Seriously," she said. "They're just trying to scare you and provoke you into going hostile. They're scripted so they won't attack during the festival-a level 1 player with 200 HP could walk through here safely tonight."

"Since when are you in the habit of giving out free tips?" I asked, probably more crossly than I should've. I shifted my weight as my boots squelched in the mud.

"Since I'm the one who's likely to be their next target if you do something stupid and provoke them into killing you."

"Noted," I replied, mouth twisting into a lopsided smile. "Do you have my dagger?"

"Sure," Agro said, drawing a cloth-wrapped package from beneath her cloak and holding it out. "Just do me a favor?"

"Don't you usually pay for those?" I asked.

"Don't be a jackass," she shot back. "This one's as much of a favor to yourself as to me: whatever you do, don't equip it until you get inside and out of _their_ sight."

I don't know that I'd exactly call Argo a friend, per se, but we've done business a lot over the last year or so... and we understand each other. Behind all the banter, we both know the other keeps their promises. She might flip me all kinds of shit, but when it comes to business she's the straight goods and she always delivers. She wouldn't be telling me this if it wasn't important.

That kind of reputation matters as much here as it does in the real world-if not more.

"Thanks," I said, stashing the package in my inventory with a few curt gestures and risking a brief, nervous glance back over my shoulder. The congregation of specters hadn't gone anywhere, presumably waiting to see what these two mortal visitors would do. "I really mean it."

Argo waved a hand wound with strips of white fabric as she turned to go. "Pleasure doing business with you. And hey, Kadyn?"

I'd already started towards the crypt entrance. Pausing briefly, I gave the diminutive broker a sidelong look. "Yeah?"

Was it my imagination that she hesitated before answering? I couldn't really be sure. "Good luck." And with that, she dashed off into the night, disappearing quickly into the dense fog bank rolling over the mass graves.

* * *

With a sound like a park bench being dragged across concrete, the door to the crypt slowly swung shut behind me, plunging the room into relative darkness with a final echoing boom that I feared would draw unwanted attention. The only light, such as it was, came from a pair of torches thirty meters in that I'd guess were programmed to always be lit. At least, I'd hate to think of what you'd have to pay someone to come down here every few hours to replace them.

Even with the torchlight, it was still darker in here than outside in the moonlight; I waited for my eyes to adjust before moving. In dungeons like this, it was rare for mobs to placed immediately inside the entrance-it was common for the entrance rooms to be free of hazards so that parties or raids could wait while they assembled there without having to worry about roamers. I didn't remember there being any leftover loot or repops in this room when we came through before, but I still proceeded cautiously to the torchlit area and didn't breathe easy until I was sure the room was clear.

It was time to unwrap Argo's package. Opening my inventory and summoning the cloth-wrapped bundle she gave me, I blinked in surprise as I took a good look at it. I hadn't examined it too closely when we were outside, but it seemed a bit… well, _big_ to be a dagger-class weapon. The shape was odd, too. Unwilling to wait any longer to open my late Christmas present, I reached in and pulled the weapon free of its cloth wrappings.

As soon as I laid eyes on it, the reason for the size and shape became obvious. It was a dagger, yes-but a special kind of dagger called a kukri. It came from some Asian country or another, though I honestly couldn't have told you which one. Jutting out from a handle tightly wrapped with alternating red and black strips, the blade hooked forward in a fat teardrop shape about halfway along its length. When I drew it from its sheath I saw that the flat of the blade was etched on both sides with some kind of inscription that I couldn't read.

In truth it bordered on being a small short sword. But when I tapped it to bring up its status window, it was definitely classed as a dagger by the game, with the name of _Agile Vengeance_. It was also definitely-

"Mother of God," I whispered, my eyes flicking down the list of stats. The damage and speed were a huge upgrade from anything I'd used before. I met the level requirements, and I met-_just barely_-the stat requirements as well. Argo had been right: if my character build hadn't been focused almost exclusively on Agility, there was no way I'd have been able to equip it at the minimum required level. The weapon was probably a bit underpowered for where it dropped, but now that I saw its stats I understood the reason for the low level requirement: it was intended for my kind of character build, a build that's unpopular for a variety of very good reasons.

It all fit now. It was not at all unusual for RPGs to have unique weapons designed to encourage people to experiment with "non-optimal" builds by shoring up the weaknesses of those builds. The fatal weakness of dagger-only builds was an almost complete lack of defense, and thus…

My eyes widened as I got to the bottom of the status screen. I had to go over it twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

_Grants Extra Skill: **Dagger Defender  
**__While equipped, _Agile Vengeance_ grants the wielder the ability to block and parry with defensive priority that scales with the wielder's Agility, _Dagger Defender_ skill and character level.  
__If mastered, the _Dagger Defender _skill becomes permanent and may be used with any dagger-class weapon._

I sat back heavily against the chilly stone wall, and stared at the dagger's status window in stunned silence for a full minute. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that this weapon was worth every col I spent on it. The only question was why Argo didn't ask twice as much. Or more.

As soon as I asked myself the question though, I laughed quietly. _Supply and demand._ _How many people use daggers as their only weapon? Aside from maybe a few people in PK guilds, I'm betting you could count the ones still alive on both hands with fingers to spare. And how many of them have the determination to level up a brand new skill all the way to full mastery using only a level 30 weapon? Someone will clear the game before that happens._

A few swipes of the finger later and _Agile Vengeance_ was equipped as my primary weapon. A window immediately popped up, prompting me to select one of my existing skills to remove in order to make room for Dagger Defender. It was just as well; early on I had experimented with Cooking and found that it bored me beyond the telling of it.

With that done, I gave my inventory a once-over and cursed softly at what I saw. I could've sworn that between Asuna's and Rigel's gifts I'd had four healing crystals, but only three were in my inventory, and I was angry at myself for losing one-I was likely to need all of them.

_Enough gawking_, I told myself. I had my new weapon, and it was time to get moving. My wife Camilla was somewhere deep in this dungeon, and every minute of delay increased the risk that I wouldn't reach her in time.

Speaking of which, there was only one thing left to check now that I was inside the Catacombs. The area map sprang into existence before me as I called up my contact list and searched for the pulsing red light of Camilla's location marker.

"How in the…?"

I clapped a hand over my mouth as my voice bounced off the walls and down the hallway. I felt a bit silly for doing so; if the door slamming shut didn't get a mob's attention, then chances were there wasn't anything in range that would be aggroed by noise. But I'd been taken aback by what I saw on my map. This seemed to be a day for surprises.

Camilla was no longer on level 43 of the dungeon where we'd gotten separated. She was twelve levels below me, and on the move.


	5. Chapter 5

To be honest, the fact that Camilla's player icon was clearly moving on the map gave me more hope than anything else I'd seen since that horrible encounter where I lost her. Her name not being grayed out could've been a bug. Seeing an icon indicating vaguely that she was in the Catacombs could've been some kind of display error or delay in updating her status in the system-I'd never actually known anyone who died in this game before, nobody on my friends list at any rate; for all I knew that's what it showed for the place where they died.

But seeing the marker bearing her name actually _moving_ on the map… that was evidence I couldn't deny. It was the closest thing I'd get to confirming her survival short of seeing her or hearing her voice. And the fact that she was dozens of levels away from where I'd left her in this dungeon meant-or at least strongly suggested-that she was in good enough shape to fight.

_How long has it been now?_ I wondered as I approached the stairway down to the third level. It had been evening when we returned to the puzzle room where everything went tits-up on us. Somewhere around what, 7 PM? It was almost midnight now. _Five hours_, I thought. _I think it's the longest we've been apart since we found ourselves trapped in this world. Five hours of her somehow surviving down here and making her way back to the surface. The stories we're going to have for each other when we meet up again!_

It was a lovely train of thought, but I forced it to the back of my mind as my ears caught the faint sound of bone scraping on wet stone. Seeking the cover of darkness behind a thick octagonal pillar and ensuring that Sneaking was active, I triggered my Searching skill and concentrated on the room ahead.

Beyond a fitted stone archway was the room with the stairwell I needed to take, a square room much like the one I was in that measured perhaps fifteen meters to a side. The only light in these passageways was cast by lanterns hanging from the ceiling every five meters or so, and crumbling marble columns like the one behind which I took cover lined the east and west walls parallel to the path I was travelling. It left most of the side walls of these rooms in deep shadow, and while that could conceal potential enemies, it could also conceal me. Now that my Searching skill was active, I could sense that the noises I'd heard were made by some kind of humanoid skeletal mobs patrolling the hallway.

I risked a peek around the side of the pillar, and caught a fleeting glimpse of rusted steel and tattered leather over bone, and an HP bar labeled with a number four levels above mine. Ducking back into my place of concealment, I considered my options. These were basic trash mobs called Underdark Sentries. I could take them, most likely, now that I had the benefit of the Dagger Defender skill and some practice using it to get this far.

But why take the chance?

If I'd come here to farm loot or grind experience, I might've given it a shot. Definitely if I'd had Camilla by my side. But as it was… I shook my head to remind myself of why I was here, and stayed my hand until the Sentries had passed by. As soon as it was safe, I maneuvered silently to the next pillar, scanning the area until I was certain that no more were coming.

I could see the retreating backs of the skeletal mobs when I emerged from my hiding spot, and the temptation to sneak up on them and use a Backstab technique was overwhelming-it would almost certainly guarantee a one-hit kill, and ensure that they wouldn't surprise me if they pathed back.

_Stay on target_, I lectured myself silently. _Roamers usually stay on the same level where they pop-these guys aren't going to go downstairs. They're just patrolling the hallway._ I backed slowly towards the stairwell, waited until I couldn't see or hear the skeletons any longer... then turned and sprinted, taking the stairs two steps at a time.

I'd been very lucky so far. I hadn't played solo in years, but there was no denying that a solo player could slip in and out of areas that would force a party-even a duo like Camilla and I-to fight their way through. We knew the first ten or fifteen levels of this dungeon pretty well by now; there were plenty of places like those pillar-lined hallways upstairs that could allow stealthy players to bypass some fights and avoid wasting time with trash mobs. I intended to use every single one of them.

In retrospect, taking the steps two at a time like that was a mistake. I was in such a hurry to get to the next level that I completely forgot to scan the room at the bottom for roamers, and as a result I nearly ran headlong into the Gorehoof Vanguard that chose that moment to path past the doorway.

"Oh crap!" I threw myself to the ground feet first before I could barrel into the mob, sliding between its legs on the slippery wet stone as if I was trying to steal home plate. I heard its sledgehammer pound the ground where my head had been a moment earlier, rock chips peppering my hair and investing me with a powerful motivation to keep moving.

Rolling up to my feet behind the mob, I held _Agile Vengeance_ centered in front of my chest with the flat of the blade facing up and my other palm against the pommel, and as the system assist carried me into Backstab I was already moving and accelerating the motions of the technique. The heavy teardrop shape of the dagger's tip plunged into where the undead minotaur's spine would have been if it was real, bypassing its armor rating and dealing a critical hit with a flash of bright crimson light.

The Gorehoof gave out an ululating shriek as its HP bar dropped immediately into the red zone. With a speed that was astonishing for an undead creature of its bulk, it spun on one hoof and swung the sledgehammer with one hand in a backhanded horizontal arc, leaving a tracer of sickly green light in its wake.

There was no dodging this counterattack. Backstab was a powerful ability, and could deal out devastating burst damage if you could get behind an opponent unawares. But it had one serious drawback: its recovery time. If you didn't take down the mob with that strike-or worse, missed-you were vulnerable for close to a full second afterwards.

Vulnerable… but not defenseless. Not anymore. Reversing the kukri in my grip, I swung it in an upwards sweeping arc as if it was a short sword. There was a flash as the flat of the blade struck the shaft of the sledgehammer, diverting its path by a few inches, and I felt a massive blow send me flying backwards. I bounced twice on the unyielding stone, and as I reeled from the blow I had the random thought that it was a good thing our avatars didn't have tailbones.

If it had been a two-handed attack with all of the mob's strength behind it, or if I had taken that swing squarely, it probably would've one-shotted me. At my level there was no way I had the priority to defend against a heavy weapon like that. As it was, the parry only barely managed to deflect the blow. I still took a considerable amount of damage, my HP dropping below half in one hit. But I wasn't the only one who could be left vulnerable by a long recovery time. I saw the Vanguard's wild swing end its arc by pummeling the wall to my right, sending a shower of stone fragments away from the impact point.

_Got you, _I thought fiercely. I reversed the dagger one more time, crouching with it held behind me at an angle. As the Gorehoof extracted its weapon from the wall, I closed the distance rapidly with Leaping Slash, cutting a glowing trail in the air with the overhand attack. The heavy tip clove deeply into the mob's forehead, and I fell to one knee through a curtain of sparkling green polygons as it died. I didn't even bother to look at the victory window that appeared, slapping at the air before me to close it.

"Stupid," I said, berating myself through clenched teeth. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. Brilliant job, Kadyn. Next time just hang out a sign that says, 'noob here, please gank'." I sat down hard and withdrew a healing crystal, breathing a sigh of relief as my HP gauge shot rapidly back up to green.

It was as good a moment as any to stop and take stock of the situation. After scanning the area for any other enemies, I pulled up the map and checked on Camilla's position. Level 11. She was definitely heading towards the surface, but she wasn't all that far from where she'd been before. I wasn't surprised. She wasn't anywhere near as stealthy as me-okay, let's be honest; she's about as stealthy as a rock concert!-and she'd have to be taking things pretty slowly. Avoiding battles where possible, but for the most part pulling mobs one by one and taking the time to heal in betw-

_Wait a minute_. My hand froze in the air, the gesture I'd been about to make aborted.

For a while I'd had a nagging suspicion that I was missing something important, but I hadn't really been able to take the time to think it through. As my thoughts strayed to Camilla and how she must be progressing, however, something clicked inside my head. I swept the map window aside and opened my inventory again, my lips moving silently as I scrolled through the list and counted what was there.

There was one healing crystal left. I'd had three, and I'd only used one. Moreover, one of my antidote potions was gone. And suddenly I realized, in a leap of reasoning that struck me between the eyes like a blow from a clue by four, exactly what it was I'd overlooked.

I didn't lose that second healing crystal, nor the one I thought I'd lost earlier or the antidote potion. Camilla had _used_ them. We couldn't send messages to each other, we couldn't even see each other's status… but as husband and wife, we didn't have separate inventories. They'd fused into one as soon as the system registered our marriage in the code. I could still give her things, albeit indirectly. I could still help her, even if I wasn't there.

I abruptly felt _incredibly _dumb for not investing the money in a teleport crystal when I had the chance. If I'd asked Argo to look for one, she probably could've gotten it for me, and for less than I paid for this dagger. I'd thought about it, but reasoned that we'd need two to get out together once I found her, and knew I couldn't afford that.

Instead I could've just put one in our shared inventory, and the first time Camilla looked in there she would've been able to just take it and port out-assuming she wasn't in a teleport nullification area. Instead of traipsing around this dungeon and fearing the worst, we'd be back in our room in Gilthac, laughing about the close call and making up for lost time in the best possible way.

I pounded my fist into the floor once, swearing creatively and at length. It was too late to go back. Mobs would be repopping behind me, and at any rate I certainly didn't have the money for a teleport crystal now. I was committed to this course of action.

But it was one more data point assuring me that yes, she really was still alive. And more importantly: that I wasn't powerless to help her from afar.

Gathering my wits, I rose quickly and checked myself over. If I didn't get moving, that Gorehoof Vanguard or one of its buddies was likely to respawn. There was only one healing crystal left, and I was damned if I was going to risk having to use it-as far as I was concerned, it and everything else in our inventory was hers right now.

The next several levels of the Catacombs went by in a blur. I had to clear some trash mobs that I couldn't avoid, but by pulling them one by one and making good use of my new defensive abilities, I was able to do it with minimal HP loss. Most of the time I simply looked for the right route to slip past them, or watched a roamer's path until I knew when it would be safe to go. Once I even saw a named Growler, but after tonight's events there was no way I was taking that kind of risk no matter what it might drop. I wasted close to half an hour finding a way around its room.

The path down to level 8 was a long climb on a slippery rope ladder. It was one of the more dangerous level transitions in this part of the dungeon, primarily because it was extremely hard to tell what might be waiting below while you were concentrating on climbing, and one wrong move could result in a potentially lethal twenty-meter drop to the floor below… not to mention the risk of knocking off the other members of your party as you fell.

Worse, there were known roamers in the hallway below: Gorehoof Sentinels. I was fortunate that my skill level was high enough to detect them before I got within their aggro radius, but that still left the question of how to deal with them. The time I spent stuck there halfway down that ladder, trying to avoid losing my grip on a rope that was slick from mildew and rot, was not one of the more pleasant experiences I've had in Aincrad.

I was trying to decide if I should wait for a big enough gap in the patrol routes of the roamers or try dropping down on top of one of them in a surprise attack when I heard the commotion. It was the sound of metal striking metal; the sound of battle. It had to be another player-none of the mobs down here were aggro to each other. Hooking my left elbow through one of the rungs of the rope ladder for stability, I reached out with my other hand and brought up the system menu, navigating to my contact list with the familiar chiming sounds echoing down the passageway.

I knew what I was going to see there before the map even opened, but I had to be sure. I was rewarded with the sight of Camilla's icon pulsing in the air before me, denoting her location on level 8 and giving a distance of less than a hundred meters from my position. A fierce joy filled me in a rush of warmth, a euphoria that pushed all doubts out of my head and left room for nothing but the determination to descend the rest of the way as fast as I could.

And that was when I heard her scream.


	6. Chapter 6

Camilla and I had been married for over a decade, and we'd been playing online games together for even longer. No matter the words, no matter the tone or volume, whether whispered in the middle of the night or shouted over voice chat, I knew the sound of her voice as if it were my own. I couldn't tell if it was a scream of pain or outrage, but I was in motion before it finished echoing off the walls of the Catacombs.

What came next happened so quickly, I truly couldn't explain exactly _how_ it happened… only that it did. When her voice reached me, I let my elbow slip from where it was hooked into the rope ladder, twisting as I fell and swiping my system menu closed as I shouted wordless defiance at the air. The fall seemed to take forever, each movement stretching out like taffy until I could almost see what I had to do before the moment arrived. When the Gorehoof Sentinel walked underneath the rope ladder passage, a kind of clarity entered my mind, almost as if I had been expecting it. My dagger swung into position to launch a charge attack with what felt to me like agonizing slowness, glowing tracers trailing behind me from the shining blade of the dagger.

The Sentinel looked up. A part of me, for a fleeting moment, almost felt sorry for it. As its cursor turned red and it began the motion of swinging its shield up towards me, a feeling of absolute _correctness_ washed over me. Part of my mind that was still concerned with trivia such as living through this battle noted distantly that in less than a second I would impact either the floor below or the shield that the Sentinel was still bringing into position, and that either one would result in potentially fatal falling damage.

At that moment, I triggered the Art that I had been charging.

With a streak of light, the system assist shot me forward several meters in an instant-forward in this case being in a diagonal path over the mob's shoulder. As I passed the Gorehoof's unguarded body just above its shield, I slashed the edge of the dagger across its neck with the palm of my off hand pressed against the back of the blade.

My trajectory and momentum diverted by the skill execution, I ceased my headlong plummet and instead ended the skill about a meter off the ground-just behind the Gorehoof. That much of a fall I could take easily, and before I dropped to the ground I spun in midair, executing Spinning Slash and striking the Gorehoof in a diagonal line across its back. I had a significantly greater chance of critting with an attack from behind, and I wasn't disappointed: a sunburst of red flared out when the attack connected, and the mob had begun shattering before my feet touched the floor.

I didn't wait for the animation to finish, my ears guiding me towards the sound of an ongoing battle. Whatever Camilla was fighting in here, it sounded like she was fending off half a dozen of them at once. Slapping the victory window closed, I launched myself in the direction of the commotion, leaping over an old oak table and pushing my running ability to the very limits of my Agility stat. "Camilla!" I shouted. "I'm coming!"

A gargling roar sounded from my left, and a shape loomed out of the darkness beyond one of the doorways. With a drumbeat of hooves, another Sentinel charged out at me, aggroed by the sound of my voice. I weighed the time it would take to kill it versus the risk of training it onto Camilla if I kept going, and didn't much care for the options. I crouched down and grabbed one edge of the heavy table, putting my shoulder into it and flipping it over in between the new add and myself.

The unexpected barrier halted the mob in its tracks, confusing its pathing AI for a few moments. In that time I slashed open the system menu and hurriedly activated an item, touching the blade of my dagger with a glowing fingertip. The tip began to glow the same yellow just as the Gorehoof Sentinel rounded the overturned table.

"Too late," I spat through bared teeth as I raised the dagger and triggered Leaping Stab, taking advantage of the skill's rapid execution and recovery. The Sentinel swung its shield around, but I had deliberately aimed low and the back of the dagger deflected off the bottom edge of the shield-just barely delivering a grazing wound to its unprotected belly. The glow from the dagger transferred to the wound, making it shine with a pulsating yellow light rather than the red of lost HP.

I watched the Sentinel for a few moments to make sure the paralysis status effect wasn't resisted. As it began to topple to the ground, immobilized, I turned and ran rather than wasting the time to dispatch it.

The battle had to be close. I could hear shouts and the shrill clash of metal weapons, the hollow pounding of hooves on stone and the dull thud of heavy objects impacting walls and floors. I blasted through a wood door with a knockback skill, almost knocking it off its hinges as it slammed into the wall. Skidding to a stop to listen for a second, I dashed off to through the doorway to the east and at last came across what I had been desperately seeking for hours.

It was not the least bit what I expected. Perhaps whatever gods watch over this closed system have a sense of humor after all.

Even though the room wasn't well-lit, and despite the fact that she had her back turned, I knew it was her without having to check. Her red hair had been tied back into a loose ponytail, and her armor looked like it had been dragged through the mud to camouflage it, but it was absolutely my wife out there facing down a named Gorehoof and a pair of adds. She wasn't alone, either-there were half a dozen other players there with her, a group of men in red and green light armor who, judging from the symbols next to their HP bars, were all part of a guild.

And they were doing just fine without my help, from the looks of it.

Perhaps it was the unexpected nature of the situation that stopped me from charging in right away. I had a moment of shock to savor what I was seeing, to appreciate how well these players moved together. They weren't the well-oiled machinery of a professional raid group, but they had the kind of teamwork made to look easy that only came from playing together for a long time.

As that thought was rolling through my head, Camilla dropped to one knee, planting the narrow end of the kite shield into a crack in the floor and angling it slightly. The named Gorehoof-I caught sight of the words "Aktu the Undying" hanging above its head in white-outlined letters-lunged forward with an impaling attack, and the tip of its spear deflected off the top of Camilla's shield at an angle, passing just barely above her head. "Switch!" she called out.

That word snapped me out of the moment. I began running towards the battle, and watched as a katana-wielding player leapt into the opening she'd just created. His shock of unruly hair-a color closer to brown than the flame of Camilla's-was restrained in an ugly striped bandana, and he was grinning with glee as he executed a slashing attack that drew two glowing red lines in an X across the named's chest. Its first HP bar-already cut down considerably-disappeared entirely, and its remaining bar dropped almost to half, staying just barely in the green.

"Don't hog all the fun, Leader!" hollered one of the other players, an overweight youth wearing a brown leather breastplate with a high collar.

"Get in here and do some damage then," retorted the guy with the bandana, laughing as he rolled out of the way of Aktu the Undying's counterattack. In the meantime, Camilla had shifted her attention to one of the adds, which was charging at several of the other players who were busy with the other add.

I recognized the Art that she activated as soon as she leaned the tip of her sword over her shoulder-and sure enough, she dashed forward a moment later in a streak of blue light, the Horizontal skill carrying her in front of and past the Gorehoof trash mob and leaving an ugly red gash glowing on its torso. It staggered backwards, its charge interrupted, and as Camilla yelled, "switch!" I dashed in to join the fray.

"Mind if I cut in?" I asked as I shot past her, knowing I was going to pay for the bad joke later. I triggered Rapid Bite with a lunge, my arm turning into a blur as the multi-hit combo struck the off-balance mob with a flurry of stinging attacks. It exploded into shimmering green fragments as the technique came to a stop, and into the momentary pause of the skill recovery I heard Camilla's voice, filled with shock. "Kadyn?"

I turned, smiled at her, and flourished the dagger. It had the desired effect: it drew out the laugh that I hadn't been sure I'd ever hear again.

"Kadyn, oh my God… where have you been?"

"Where have I been? Never mind that, how did you surv-"

"Later!" she shot back, whirling and presenting her shield between her and the named. "Go with me!"

I set aside all the things I'd wanted to say to her since our separation. They could wait, as could the explanations that I knew were going to take a while. "Call it," I said.

"I'll turn 'em, you burn 'em!" Her shield began to glow as she activated an Art, and began charging towards the named that was starting to press the katana-wielder and break through his guard. Right as he yelled "switch!" she closed the intervening distance and dropped her shoulder as she struck the named with a shield charge. A blinding blue-white flash accompanied the knockback effect, and as it tumbled backwards she ran around to the other side of the mob, drawing its attention to her and away from me.

Up until now it looked like this party had been playing this battle pretty straight-two of them had been assigned to keeping each of the adds busy, while Camilla tanked the named and switched the last two players in to exploit openings. But she and I had been doing this together for years, and we had our own routine. As expected, the shield charge and knockback enraged the named, and it stamped the ground angrily as it turned to face its assailant. Right on cue, I activated the Backstab technique and plunged _Agile Vengeance_ into the exposed back of Aktu the Undying. Incredibly, even though it had only just over half of a bar remaining, the mob's HP only dropped by a quarter. It was almost enough to put it in the red.

I'd known I was going to have to deal with Backstab's long recovery time, but I'd thought that Camilla would be able to keep the mob's attention long enough for me to get back. What I hadn't counted on was the versatility of the spear it was wielding. Rather than turning to face me, it simply jabbed behind it with the butt of the spear, striking me right in the gut. If our avatars had needed to breathe, it would've driven the breath from me. As it was, it still stunned me for a moment.

"Hey, whoever you are, welcome to the prom!" It was the bandana guy calling out to me as he swept in from one side and deflected the spear away from me when the named tried to follow up its attack. "As you can see, poor Aktu showed up without a date, so it's our job to show him a good time. Nice of you to join in!" Each sentence was punctuated by a parry as the named divided its attention between him and Camilla.

"Don't mind if I do!" I said, grinning as I got back to my feet.

"Then switch!"

I was already moving in. The bandana guy-I figured I'd learn his name, but I couldn't stop thinking of him as that-jumped backwards as Camilla sidestepped a thrust from the spear and drove her shield into Aktu's flank. As the mob doubled over for a second, I launched into Leaping Slash, giving the dagger an extra flourish for the hell of it as I swung it overhand and drove it down into the back of the named. Its HP bar dropped to a sliver, and Camilla's sword drew a crackling blue arc in the air as her Diagonal skill clove the creature in two, depleting the last of its life and scattering its digital ashes in every direction.

As the named mob's death shatter echoed hollowly in the room, it faded to the sound of eight people panting with relief, the pregnant silence that always follows a hard-fought battle.

It was my wife that finally broke the spell. "We did it!" she yelled triumphantly. That seemed to open the floodgates from the rest of the players, and they all started cheering, pounding each other on the back and a few of them bragging about items they'd gotten. A thin man with a wispy mustache and chin scruff jumped on bandana guy's back, laughing and tussling with him. Camilla just stood there in the middle of it with a stupid grin on her face, turning and looking at me with her eyes shining.

Neither of us had to say anything. In a few steps we'd each crossed the distance separating us, and she swept me up in her arms, whirling me around and laughing. I'd have liked to have been the one doing that to her, but she was the one wearing plate armor and having the Strength stat to back it up. That goofy moment gave way to a more earnest reunion as we embraced and started making up for lost time with a kiss that set the other players to hooting and whistling.

"So, uh, this is the guy?" It was the man with the bandana and katana, standing a few steps away and rubbing the back of his head.

"No, Klein, I just go around kissing random players in pickup groups like that."

"Really?" one of the other guys said in mock-hopefulness.

"Don't make me hurt you." She grinned to take the sting out of the words. "Guys, this is my dear husband Kadyn. Who apparently is so star-spangled stupid that he thought it was a fantastic idea to come charging into the Catacombs to rescue the damsel in distress. Kadyn, this is the guild _Fuurinkazan_. We've been partied up for the last several hours, trying to get back to the surface."

"'Stupid'? Goddamnit, Camilla, I thought you were _dead_." Now that the rush of battle had worn off, I was free to let out everything I'd been holding in. "The last thing I saw was that named shoulder-checking you and interrupting your teleport, and I couldn't see your status or send you a message."

"I know," she said with chagrin. "I tried, too. Believe me, I tried to get word to you. I was hoping you'd notice that I'd taken things from our inventory. Where'd you get all those crystals, by the way? And is that a new toy?" She gestured at the dagger hanging at my side, which of course she'd never seen before.

"I… made a few friends in town. When they heard what had happened they helped me out with supplies for the trip."

"They didn't try talking you out of this suicide mission?"

"They did, but I told them…" I tried to think of how to describe the conversation I'd had with Asuna and Rigel, worrying at the inside of my cheek. Finally, I said simply, "You'd have done the same for me." It wasn't even a question.

Camilla's expression softened. She held my gaze for a few beats, and nodded, a slight smile returning to her face. She gestured again towards my new weapon.

"Later," I said. These other guys looked like they were all right, and I trusted Camilla's judge of character. But I'd be damned if I was going to explain about _Agile Vengeance_ and the extra skill it granted in mixed company-I didn't want anyone thinking I was a beater.

The sound of a cleared throat brought my attention back to the man she'd called Klein. "Well, um… this is really cool, I'm glad you guys met up again. But… how to say this…"

Camilla had a gift for being direct. It was one of her most American traits. "You want to know if you're about to lose your tank."

Klein gave her an embarrassed grin as his guildmates shuffled their feet. "Something like that."

My wife looked a question at me. The corner of my mouth quirked very slightly. An entire conversation passed with those two subtle expressions, and she turned back to Klein. "Come on. We haven't got that far to go, and you've seen the kind of DPS my husband can put out. We'll make short work of the rest."

The wave of relief that passed through the six men was palpable. I could see why. They looked like a really effective, tight-knit group… but they didn't have anyone who looked like they were specced out for pure tanking. A few shield users, one of them with a few pieces of plate armor, but nothing like the wall of steel that Camilla could put in harm's way.

I could see Klein moving his hands in the air as if he was manipulating his system menu, and a moment later saw a party invite pop up. I accepted and fell into step with my wife.

"So anyway," I said to her as the eight of us began making our way back. "I've been meaning to ask, how the hell did you survive that room after I ported out? Was that when Klein and his friends rolled in to save the day?"

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence in the party, and then the air filled with the sound of raucous laughter, Camilla's as loud as anyone else's. The odd man out, I looked around in confusion. "What's so funny?"

"That's not quite what happened," she began, trailing off as if unsure how to explain.

One of the other players playfully shoved me from behind. "What she's too polite to say, man, is that _she_ saved _our_ asses."

Camilla looked like she couldn't decide whether to be faintly embarrassed or full of herself.

"Okay," I said, grinning at her and interleaving my fingers with hers. "This I have to hear."


	7. Chapter 7

As the last of our party climbed out of the rope ladder passage and returned to the 7th level of the Catacombs, Camilla waited for me to signal that the immediate area was clear, and then asked, "Where do you want me to start?"

That was an easy one. "Well, I'd love to know how you survived that fiasco in the puzzle room. That was a sub-boss with seven adds. It would've picked its teeth with both of us."

"Ah," she said, grinning and unsheathing her sword, miming the motions of one of her Arts without actually activating it. "I'd like to say that I valiantly fought them off, but the truth is… I panicked and did something incredibly stupid out of desperation."

I raised my eyebrows and nodded for her to continue, stepping around a pile of something unmentionable that lay in our path.

"Horizontal."

"Horizontal?"

Camilla nodded, miming the same motions again with her sword. You know, that dashing slash that-"

"I know what it is; I've seen you do it enough times. But I don't get how it would've helped in that situation."

"Well, you know how you don't necessarily have to have a target for most techniques? You can perform them anywhere, anytime. You won't gain skillups from slashing at empty air, but you can do it."

This wasn't getting me any closer to knowing what happened. I could tell she was enjoying drawing this out. "And?"

"When I saw you teleport away, I put both boots in the chest of the roamer that had tackled me and kicked it off. By that point, almost every mob in the room was about to tear into me and there was a single gap between them that I couldn't run through in time. So I activated Horizontal and used the system assist to dash through the gap."

I had to hand it to her. "That was clever."

"Too clever by half. As soon as I activated the skill, I had no choice but to wait for the system assist to finish moving me. It shot me right past the named… and over the side of the pit."

"Whoops."

"Whoops," she echoed. "To be honest, it probably saved my life-and even if it hadn't, I think I'd almost rather die from falling damage than get hacked to pieces by a room full of zombie minotaurs."

"So why didn't you?" I asked, glancing around at the other players. Klein was grinning, as if he knew something I didn't. "Die, I mean. We couldn't see the bottom of that pit when we went through there the first time."

"Sheer luck. First of all, the pit wasn't what we thought it was. There were only two torches lighting that entire room, and we couldn't really see very far down. I was able to shed some momentum by stabbing my sword into the side of the pit; it wasn't solid rock. But I'd only fallen for maybe a few seconds before I hit a slanted surface, and found myself sliding downward through a slimy, winding tunnel in pitch darkness."

I tried to imagine it. Scenes from various movies popped into my head, none of which probably compared to how scary that fall must have been.

"I'm not sure how long I was on that ride, and I couldn't get my map window open to check where I was. Eventually the slope leveled out, and I smashed through a metal wall grate that was rusted through, landing in a room I'd never seen before."

"On me!" Klein put in, right as several of his guildmates said roughly the same thing, laughing.

Camilla smirked, poking him in the arm. "Poor Klein. First time in this game that a girl jumps on him, and it has to be a married older woman in full plate armor."

"Hey, who said it was the first time?"

She stuck out her tongue at him and pulled down one eyelid. "So anyway, I go flying out of this sewer grate, covered in God-only-knows what kind of muck, and land in a heap right on top of their Fearless Leader here. And talk about your shitty timing-right in the middle of a battle."

"Nothing bad about your timing," Klein protested. "We were getting creamed by that thing."

"Named Lurkwing," Camilla explained to me.

Klein then began filling in what had led up to that point on his end. His party had been part of the raid group we'd been following, and while we were off getting lost in side passages they'd made it to the final boss room of this dungeon and cleared it. Instead of porting back to town with the rest of the raid group, though, they'd decided to spend some time leveling and farming mobs on the way back up. Camilla's uncontrolled slide through the drainage tunnel had actually carried her down to the 43rd level of the Catacombs, which was where she-quite literally-ran into Klein and his party. The named Lurkwing had just stunned several of them with its sonic AOE attack, and the fight had been starting to go really badly.

"So we're getting our asses kicked," Klein said, whacking Camilla on the back with the palm of his hand, "and all of a sudden this knight in shining armor-"

"Shining, my ass; it looked even worse than it does now."

He ignored the interjection. "-comes flying in to save the day."

"By which he means I went 'oh shit!' and started fighting for my life."

"That's what I said," Klein replied breezily.

"Anyway," Camilla went on, "once we defeated the named we realized that we all had a better chance of getting out alive if we partied up. We didn't want to try going back down to the boss room to use the return portal there; too much risk of him repopping. So up it was."

Silence fell as she finished the story. I stared at my wife as we walked, taking her hand again. "You are the most amazing woman I've ever met. Will you marry me?"

She laughed, eyes twinkling. "I don't know, Kadyn. I think maybe you've got some competition now."

I looked over my shoulder at Klein, who seemed a little bit uncomfortable, like he wasn't quite sure how to take the banter that was passing between my wife and I. "I could take him," I said, grinning. "Two out of three, maybe."

As his guildmates howled with laughter, Klein puffed up his chest. "In your dreams, buddy." Then he caught my eye and answered my grin. "No really though, you're one lucky dude. Badass tank for a wife, and she's a foreign chick with a cool accent too."

"I do _not_ have an accent," Camilla protested with an affected pout. She was very proud about her fluency in Japanese, which she'd been studying since high school and immersed in even before we moved back to Japan together.

"You do too," I teased. While I was from Chiba and spoke fairly generic "standard" Japanese, one of her teachers had been from the Kansai region and it had rubbed off a little on her. "It's kinda hot."

"_Aho_," she retorted, the insult triggering another wave of laughter through the party.

As we drew nearer to the surface and left the areas I'd more recently fought through, there was less and less time for conversation, and more battle. Between the eight of us, though, we blazed through the trash mobs and even managed to take out the named Growler I'd carefully avoided earlier. It was an anticlimactic end to a night that had overstayed its welcome, filled with far too much drama for my liking. We were all ready to collapse where we stood when we finally returned to Gilthac.

We stopped before the entrance to the inn where Asuna and Rigel had taken me earlier, dead on our feet. "This is where we're staying," Klein said, looking about as wiped out as I felt. "You guys got a place?"

"Yeah," I replied, an arm around Camilla's shoulders. "We're renting the second story over the blacksmith's shop. And if we don't get there soon, I think we'll be sleepwalking the rest of the way. Before we go, though…" I stuck out my hand, and the other man immediately shook it. "Thank you, Klein. For what you did for my wife. For us. It was great fighting at your side."

Klein rubbed the back of his head again, ruffling his hair in what I recognized now as a nervous gesture. "Hey, don't mention it. Like I said, she pulled our fat out of the fire down there too. Far as I'm concerned, we're all even." He stopped and looked around at his guildmates. One by one, they nodded.

"You guys ever think about joining a guild?"

Camilla and I both blinked and looked at each other. We'd actually thought about forming one before, just for the two of us… but there really wasn't any advantage we could gain by doing so that we didn't already have from being married. But someone else's guild… especially a guild full of people who'd already known each other a long time...

As our gazes met, my wife and I held another conversation that consisted of nothing but the most subtle changes of facial expression and years of shared context. Finally, Camilla looked back at Klein and gave him a proper bow. "We're incredibly grateful for your generous offer, and for everything you've done this evening. But I think we'd prefer to remain as we are."

Bowing as well, I nodded in agreement, and then smiled at Klein. He had a look of mild disappointment on his face until I spoke. "But if you guys ever want to party up again…"

Camilla finished my sentence. "We'd love to." We both opened our menus and sent him a friend request.

Klein tapped the air twice in front of him to accept both requests, and gave us a thumbs-up. "You got it."

* * *

With the touch of a fingertip on the lamp's pop-up window, all illumination within the room ceased, leaving only a faint red light coming in through the window as the sun began to slowly rise above the artificial horizon. The room was filled with quiet chiming sounds as both of us manipulated our respective equipment windows to remove all of our gear and clothing. The rustle of fabric was the only remaining sound as we both slithered beneath the covers, overcome with exhaustion.

I felt Camilla's welcome warmth as she cuddled up next to me. "Tired," she murmured.

"_Too_ tired?" I asked playfully, partially serious despite my own state of exhaustion.

"Too tired," she replied, eyes half-lidded as a smile touched her face. "Ask me again when we wake up."

"Deal." As I waited for sleep, an uncomfortable thought crossed my mind and demanded to be voiced. "Rebecca…"

The sound of her real name forced her eyes back open. She looked the question at me across the few inches that separated our faces. "Hm?"

I hesitated, choosing my words carefully. "I didn't really have to come all the way down there after all, did I? All the risks I took, the money I spent… none of it was really necessary. You guys had already cleared close to thirty of the deepest levels on your own in the hours that I was gone; you would've been fine without one more DPS-"

A pair of fingers touched my lips, stopping me. They caressed my cheek as my wife leaned over and kissed me sleepily, her lips lingering there as we lay face to face even after the kiss ended. "No, you didn't have to come for me," she said, her breath a light breeze across my face. "I would've been okay."

I didn't have time to think about how I felt about that before she finished her thought.

"But I'm very happy that you did."

It was the last thing I heard before sleep welcomed us both. Nothing else mattered.

****  
おわり  
****

* * *

**Character Name**: Kadyn (ケイディン)  
**Real Name**: Seiji Midorikawa (緑川誓地)  
**Birthplace**: Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture (Japan)  
**Age**: 29  
**Level**: 38  
**Main Equipment**: _Agile Vengeance_ (One-Handed Dagger)  
**Skill Slots**: 7  
**Equipped Skills**:

One-Handed Dagger (511)  
Leather Equipment (304)  
Dagger Defender (61) (Extra; granted by _Agile Vengeance_)  
Searching (510)  
Hiding (354)  
Acrobatics (380)  
Sprint (259)

At age 16, Seiji was accepted as an overseas exchange student in a Los Angeles high school. While studying there he met a young girl named Rebecca Riley, who was in need of a Japanese conversation partner for the class she was taking. The two quickly discovered that they shared a mutual enjoyment of the same kinds of video games, and long before they graduated they had become an inseparable couple. After high school they moved to Seiji's native Japan together and married, spending their free time immersed in online games together and always playing as a team—to the point where they called each other by their longtime character names as much as or more than their real names. When Sword Art Online was announced, they tried and failed to enter the closed beta, but succeeded in becoming two of the unlucky ten thousand who were trapped in the Death Game on launch day.

Seiji prefers to play stealthy DPS classes, using tactical positioning and Rebecca's skill at tanking to flank the enemy and deliver critical blows at the right moment. In SAO, he found himself more dependent than ever on his wife's tanking abilities until he acquired his current weapon, which gave him some rudimentary defensive abilities that he struggles to level up.

**Character Name**: Camilla (カミーラ)  
**Real Name**: Rebecca Midorikawa (緑川レベカ)  
**Birthplace**: San Francisco, California (USA)  
**Age**: 28  
**Level**: 38  
**Main Equipment**: _Northwind's Edge_ (One-Handed Straight Sword); _Verdant Crusader_ (Kite Shield)  
**Skill Slots**: 7  
**Equipped Skills**:

One-Handed Straight Sword (533)  
Heavy Metal Equipment (592)  
Medium Shield Equipment (625)  
Parry (481)  
Battle Recovery (370)  
Extended Weight Limit (424)  
Fighting Spirit (506) (hate skill)

Rebecca had been an obsessive online gamer since she was old enough to go on the Internet by herself, and when she met Seiji in high school she was serving as the main tank of a weekend raiding guild. She recruited her future husband to play an assassin class, and as the two spent more and more time playing as guildmates in the game and as conversation partners in real life, they knew that they were meant to be together. Sword Art Online was to be like a dream come true for her; she had always yearned for the day when technology would allow gamers to _live_ in the worlds they played instead of just watching them on a screen. Instead it became a nightmare in which she and her husband were trapped.

With her aggressive nature and nobility of spirit, as well as years of experience playing tank classes, Rebecca found her calling in SAO as Seiji's sword and shield. She relishes her role, bearing the brunt of enemy attacks and hate while her partner cuts them down from behind.

* * *

Thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed this short SAO side story! These characters and the story surrounding them popped into my head more or less fully formed, and I'm happy that I was able to complete it without being too tempted to drag it out longer than it needed to be. As anyone who looks at my older fic can tell, that's been the death of many a potential story of mine.

I would be extremely grateful if you would take the time to leave your thoughts in a review, and let me know what you think of the characters and their story. I cannot promise to continue writing stories with them, as that depends entirely on what inspiration seizes me-but if nothing else I would like to think that they fought and survived until the end of Aincrad, and woke up one day beside each other, reunited in the real world.

-Catsy  
September 2012


End file.
